NU students have become winners of the BILIM Hackathon-2022
Nur-Sultan hosted the IT contest “BILIM Hackathon-2022” among college and university students, organized by the Ministry of Education and Science. On March 27, the awards ceremony for the winners of BILIM Hackathon – 2022 took place.
Applications for participation in the competition were submitted by 107 teams from all regions of the country. 72 teams, which were comprised of 230 students, made their way to the final.
Participants in the competition proposed very interesting digital projects in the field of education. There were three categories in the competition: Best Idea (with a prize of 500 thousand tenge), Best Solution (a prize of 1 million tenge) and Best Project (a prize of 1.5 million tenge). Following deliberations by a jury, the winners of the Best Project category (winning 1.5 million tenge) were students of Nazarbayev University and Astana IT University while another Nazarbayev University team was deemed to have developed the Best Solution (winning 1 million tenge).
The prize fund amounted to 3.5 million tenge. In addition to cash prizes, the winners had the opportunity to discuss their career with Kazakhstani IT companies such as Daryn online, BTS Education, EDUS, Mail.kz and others. Moreover, some of the digital solutions proposed by the contestants have already found investors.
We talked to one of the members of the winning team – Assel Abzalova, a student in the Computer Science department, NU SEDS.
Tell us about your project, please. How did the idea come about?
Our project is a mobile application for finding study buddies using artificial intelligence. We came up with this idea after realizing that we had spent the entire previous school year online without the opportunity to properly study with our peers, which negatively effected our academic performance. When you study alone, you have no motivation and no mentors to help guide you in the right direction. Therefore, we have developed a mobile application that helps you create your study meetings both online and offline, as well as search for study buddies.
What are your impressions of the competition and organization?
Most of all, we appreciated the help of mentors who approached each team, asked questions and thus pushed us in the right direction. Additionally, I really liked the atmosphere of the hackathon – it was both competitive and friendly. All of the participants were working on developing their ideas and skills. I remember how a schoolboy approached our teammates, former trainees from Yandex, and began to enthusiastically ask how to upgrade his programming skills. It was the cutest moment in the hackathon.
What are your future plans?
As the saying goes, ‘more is more.’ In the future, most likely, we will develop the project, because this idea seems relevant now, during the lifting of quarantine and the transition to offline learning.
The team was comprised of Abylai Kairatbek, Meyirlan Suyirkhanov, Dastan Bekmukhanbetov, Assel Abzalova and Nurlan Salavat.
We sincerely congratulate our winners and wish them further success in their studies!